


keychains and compasses

by castelia



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Episode: s02e06 Tallahassee, F/M, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:13:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29521383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/castelia/pseuds/castelia
Summary: This is her downfall, once: being too trusting, naive despite the edges the foster system gave her, stolen watches and a disarming smile.This could be her downfall, now: a climb up a beanstalk, a man she's impossibly willing to trust, a put upon smile that gets genuine when he calls her a “tough lass”.To trust or not to trust. It used to be a no-brainer.
Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan, past Baelfire | Neal Cassidy/Emma Swan - Relationship
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	keychains and compasses

This is her downfall, once: being too trusting, naive despite the edges the foster system gave her, stolen watches and a disarming smile.

This could be her downfall, now: a climb up a beanstalk, a man she's impossibly willing to trust, a put upon smile that gets genuine when he calls her a “tough lass”.

To trust or not to trust. It used to be a no-brainer.

He is _ridiculous_. With the constant flirting and innuendo, and the accent, and those blue, blue eyes… The way he used his mouth to pop the cork off the rum and to bandage her wound…

Completely ridiculous.

And dangerous, too. A man after revenge. Not just for his lost hand, she learns, but for a lost love, and that pierces her. It makes him seem human and real in a way he just didn’t before, with real heartbreak.

“You’re quite perceptive, for someone who’s never been in love.”

“Maybe I was, once,” she admits, refusing to dwell on how easily the words fall from her lips.

After her first night in prison, Emma wakes up—in a way.

It doesn’t take her long to get used to the new routine in her incarceration. She’s used to a volatile lifestyle. She goes through the motions mechanically, some part of her still filled with disbelief that any of this happened at all. She wonders if this empty misery is what makes people become the criminals she shares a roof with.

Only, _they_ didn’t get left on the side of the freeway with nothing but a name, _they_ didn’t blindly trust a thief and expect the outcome to be anything other than what happened.

No, that was just her, still an outcast. It's just among criminals now instead of the people in foster care.

Alliances shift. There is a big chance that he is a double agent for Cora. A man like this who only wants revenge and who will do anything to get it, that’s dangerous.

She can’t put her trust in him.

She’s pregnant in prison and he leaves her _car keys_ for her troubles. Anger overshadows the pain and the fear. If she ever sees his face again, she’s going to deck him. She’s going to punch him in his no-good, pretty face and it’ll serve him right.

She tentatively puts her hand on her belly. There is no place for a baby in that vague future scenario.

There is no place for a baby in her life. Not when her life is this.

His laugh is much nicer when it’s genuine instead of some attempt at flirtation, which this is not.

“You are bloody brilliant,” he tells her after she gets the compass, and it should feel like another quip, it should be said in that (ridiculous) low, sultry voice, but he’s laughing.

She wants to put her trust in him.

Phoenix's sidewalks are filled with people, none of them him. She wasn’t expecting anything—she’s not naive anymore—but some part of her still had disbelief, that prison was a strange mechanical dream, that she didn’t give up her child (his best chance, she reminds herself forcefully), that none of it happened. That he’d greet her outside and they’d skip off into the sunset together, straight to Tallahassee.

She scoffs at herself. Not naive anymore, starting now.

Her lie detector doesn’t go off, not once.

Not with the thief and not with the pirate.

_Have I told you a lie?_

Neither had Neal, and he still betrayed her.

She has a son to get back to and no one else comes first.

She can’t afford a potential downfall. She can’t take the chance that she’s wrong about Hook.

Alliances shift.


End file.
